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In December, we mentioned the attention that Prenda law bigwig John Steele has drawn for some questionable business practices; now reader rudy_wayne writes with news (excerpted from Ars Technica) of more scrutiny of Prenda from a California district court: "A federal judge in Los Angeles has suggested serious penalties for Brett Gibbs, an attorney at porn copyright trolling firm Prenda Law. Facing allegations of fraud and identity theft, Gibbs will be required to explain himself at a March 11 hearing. And if Judge Otis Wright isn't satisfied with his answers, he may face fines and even jail time. The identity theft allegations emerged late last year, when a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper told a Minnesota court he suspected Prenda Law named him as the CEO of two litigious offshore holding companies without his permission. Worried about exposing himself to potential liability for the firms' misconduct, Cooper asked the court to investigate the situation. Cooper's letter was spotted by Morgan Pietz, an attorney who represents 'John Doe' defendants in California. He notified Judge Wright of the allegations."

John Steele. He's pretty much the mastermind behind Prenda, the torrent scanning company, the litigation tactics, the shell companies, and all the underhanded pseudo-legal tactics inbetween. He's managed to use patsies like Gibbs to file briefs, but many indications point to Steele actually authoring many of the motions that make it to the judge and simply using Gibbs' electronic signature. The buck seems to stop at Steele in this operation, and with the heat on Gibbs, everyone is hoping he will roll over like a dog on Steele, implicating him in this whole mess.

Taha! With a mastermind like John Steele behind this caper, we'd better fire up the bat signal. With a name like that he should be to Bruce Wayne what Lex Luthor is to Superman. I was getting tired of everyone running around wearing Joker makeup anyway.

These people need to go to jail hard and long. When the gardener's lawyer inquired if they could show evidence the mystery CEO was someone else, they ignored him and turned around and claimed the gardener was trying to impersonate the CEO!

Wow, the fact that his wife's company failed causing him to default on personal obligations is SO relevant to this article. Oh, wait, no it's not at all. Take your astroturfing campaign to somewhere where there are fewer rational people.

Well, I think that we've identified a more serious issue than 'mere' patent trolling - identity theft is a rather serious crime.

Though I like the idea that if it's found that they lied about the identity of their CEO, they lose standing in their other court cases - making them fraudulent as well, compounding the issue.

In the end, I'd say it's 'Scum is Scum'. If they're not too worried about one aspect of the law, they're unlikely to worry about others, to the point that when one aspect fails, it all tumbles down like a house of cards.

Personally, I'd say 'hard labor until he's worked off all the court expenses'. That's regardless of the aspect they pick - people might find porn icky, I don't really care.

Actually it is worse than that (for John Steel and Brett Gibbs). Reading the court order, they are guilty (at least accused) of 1) failing to comply with a court order and 2) fraud on the court (and therefore perjury). If they fail to show up to the March 11th hearing then you can add contempt of court to that list.

In addition to the Alan Cooper issue, Judge Wright is concerned about the slipshod way Prenda identifies defendants. When a household has multiple members, Prenda evidently decides who to sue based on statistical guesswork. "For example," Prenda wrote in one court filing, "if the subscriber is 75 years old, or the subscriber is female, it is statistically quite unlikely that the subscriber was the infringer."

These shotgun approach lawsuits are just attempts at extortion when they have no real evidence.

I really hope this guy gets some pretty serious sanctions -- making some poor schmuck the CEO of an offshore company is some pretty serious stuff, the kind that should get you into jail and disbarred.

And if I read this right, he doesn't even have legal standing to be suing, and might stand to make money from this.

His lack of legal standing to sue comes directly from the company not actually having a CEO since the named CEO never agreed to hold the position. No CEO = not actually a corporation = not actually a legal entity = no standing to sue.

Being a lawyer who knows all of that and files the suit anyway = criminal.

Good for this judge. If someone is systematically benefiting from unethical behavior, we don't want them in our legal, political, medical or other professional systems. Lawyers, doctors, etc. get paid the big bucks for good work, and also for behaving at a level above the norm. When they don't, it's a clear sign they need "another career."

If this is what they say this is... this is far enough beyond an 'ethical' breach as to be obscene.

This guy really needs to be jailed, fined, flogged, disbarred, and everything else available to the courts. TFA seems pretty clear this is wide-scale fraud on the courts. And judges don't like it when lawyers lie to them.

If this is what they say this is... this is far enough beyond an 'ethical' breach as to be obscene.

True. I sympathize with your statement. At the same time, I think that we should view ethics not as subject to violations, but as something we keep in good standing to be able to practice any number of professions linked to personal responsibility. It's a threshold measurement. A person stays in good standing so long as they are below that threshold, but as soon as they transgress and go beyond it, it doesn't matter whether it's a small or huge violation; they lose the right to have the power conveyed by that profession.

It's a threshold measurement. A person stays in good standing so long as they are below that threshold, but as soon as they transgress and go beyond it, it doesn't matter whether it's a small or huge violation; they lose the right to have the power conveyed by that profession.

But going sufficiently far beyond the threshold tends to attract additional penalties. Like fines and jail time. There's never just one threshold, but many layers of them. (Go far enough, and you'd better hope to get arrested and tried instead of just being ripped to shreds by an angry mob. Thankfully that's incredibly rare.)

I dunno, there's a lot of risky medical testing that we are currently forced to do on imperfect animal models... Might be the only way that these people could make a positive contribution.

There's a lot of truth in that. I am always tempted because I like bunnies, cats, and other fluffy beings and would prefer they did not suffer testing when we have too many humans, and so few of them worth knowing, that we could easily lose a few to sadistic and disturbing chemical testing.

Lawyers are paid to be as devious, cruel, and inhuman as possible without getting disbarred, period. From telling the jury she was 'asking for it' as she was dressed like a slut, to refusing to release someone when the DNA evidence doesn't match, but stating it is merely from an 'unidicted co-conspirator'. If your shark wins, I suppose it is 'good work', in an expediently sociopathic sense.

I don't think it's entirely "illegal". But based on the old "community standards" ruling by the Supreme Court many years ago it is possible for material to be declared obscene in a particular area. Although you don't seem to hear much about that any more.

But it is an interesting question. Can material that is considered "obscene", and therefore illegal, be copyrighted?

Wikipedia can answer that. [wikipedia.org]Some courts have applied US copyright protection to pornographic materials. Although the first US Copyright law specifically barred obscene materials, the provision was removed in subsequent extensions of copyright. Most pornographic productions are theoretically work for hire meaning pornographic models do not receive statutory royalties for their performances. Of difficulty is the changing views of what is considered obscene, meaning works could slip into and out of copyright protection based upon the prevailing standards of decency. This was not an issue with the copyright law up until 1972 when copyright protection required registration. When congress changed the law to make copyright protection automatic and for the life of the author, some courts have held it effectively granted copyright protection to pornography because materials once considered obscene might no longer be considered as such. Congress's decision also made ascertaining the copyright status of pornographic materials nearly impossible because of the secrecy conferred to the identity of the models and producers.

The copyright status of pornography in the United States has been challenged as late as February 2012.

I think the general principle behind obscene material not being copyright protected is that the courts will not support an illegal enterprise. In this context, 'obscene' is whatever has been otherwise determined to already be illegal material in the jurisdiction of the court.

You can't sue for an getting ripped off by your drug dealer. You can't sue because you didn't get your agreed cut of the bank robbery proceeds. You can't sue for copyright because someone put your copyrighted child porn on the internet.

Re:Is Porn Copyrightable?
Let's change that to "Is obscenity copyrightable?" and conjoin that with another interesting idea "Crazy copyright restrictions are obscene!".Now let's add those two concepts together and come up with "Is obscenity covered by copyright restrictions when I think the copyright restrictions themselves are obscene?!?!"..
Does the conjunction of those two concepts mean that anything which I feel is obscenely restrictive therefore does NOT have any valid copyright, and thus I may copy i

Not quite. "Obscene" material is illegal, however the definition of "obscene" is not a federal standard. It is up to local government to decide what is "obscene" and what isn't. So there can't be any federal law making pornography illegal to distribute.

What does "illegal to distribute" have to do with "copyrightable"? Having a copyright does not imply distribution. And lack of distribution does not imply impossibility of copyright breach (hint: "leak"). I'd argue that if it was illegal, the position of a copyright owner might even be stronger, since permission to distribute could not have been legally given - unless his intention to distribute can be proven, the mere fact of distribution could be viewed as proof of copyright violation (in addition to bein

Sunny Leone may have signed up for Prenda's "remove your content from sites that steal it" service, but don't assume that means she knows anything about how they go about doing so. As the link shows, Sunny is busy doing other things.

RULE 1. IN ORDER TO SUE A DEFENDANT FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, YOU MUST PROVE THAT THE DEFENDANT DOWNLOADED THE ENTIRE COPYRIGHTED VIDEO.

RULE 2. A “SNAPSHOT OBSERVATION” OF AN IP ADDRESS ENGAGED IN DOWNLOADING AT THAT MOMENT IS INSUFFICIENT PROOF OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

So looking at RULE 1 for a moment, suppose someone had an incomplete download that was missing important parts such as:
1. the unskippable commercials
2. skippable commercials
3. previews of craptacular upcoming attractions
4. the FIB warnings
5. the "Macrovision Quality Protection" notice at the very end
Etc.